Allen Zuk

The seeds of Allen’s career were planted in the mid-to-late 1980s, when his involvement with the DIY punk rock scene in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada as a writer and musician (of sorts) led him to explore the international underground press as a ‘zine publisher. This network of independent publishers was the closest thing to the internet that was available to him at the time.

Several things happened to Allen in the early 1990s:

• he got a night job as a production clerk at a community newspaper, where he learned the basics of type and composition;
• he began a degree in English Literature, which led to a specialization in non-fiction writing, at the University of Alberta; and
• he dove headfirst into a life of reckless involvement with the arts and culture.

In the mid-1990s, more things happened to Allen:

• he discovered the internet, and then the World Wide Web, in the computer labs at university;
• he took time off his studies to bum around Alberta and work at a wide range of jobs, including short terms as a typographer and general labourer at a book bindery, as a production manager and website editor at a rural newspaper, and as manager of the creative department at a web design company; and
• he took some design fundamentals courses at Mount Royal College in Calgary.

After completing the final few credits of his university degree in 2000, Allen left for the UK, where a few other important things happened:

• he got a web design job in London, England, working for his biggest clients to that date, until the first tech crash;
• he stumbled upon a job writing sales presentations, technical editing, and eventually writing for a UK book publisher specializing in books on digital creativity; and
• he renewed his love for the arts, music, culture and creativity as a performer and patron, specifically because of the people he met (and misses dearly) at Colchester Arts Centre and around the UK.

Allen has now been living in Toronto for the past five years, building an ethically sound business, borrowing bits and pieces from all the things he has learned, with the hope that he can successfully continue to do his part to promote creativity and literacy in his home country of Canada and elsewhere.

During the summer months, Allen teaches the New Technologies course in the Creative Book Publishing program at Humber College. He is also a graduate of the program’s inaugural year.